Sunday, January 22, 2017

In this week’s column,
based on requests from readers, I explain why the popular Nigerian English “His
Royal Highness” is strange to English speakers outside Nigeria. I also explain
why “the Gambia” is always preceded by the article “the.” You will find other
questions and answers on grammar and usage as well.

Traditional rulers in Nigeria are often formally addressed
as “His Royal Highness.” That is unconventional by the standards of British
English from where we borrowed it. Sovereign monarchs or kings are never
addressed as “His/Her Royal Highness.” Only princes and princesses are
addressed as such.

In British English these monarchs are addressed as Their "Royal Majesty," not Their "Royal Highness"

When princes or princesses become monarchs, they are
addressed as “His Majesty” if they are males or “Her Majesty” if they are
females. In some countries they are addressed as “His/Her Royal Majesty.”

Many British citizens not familiar with Nigeria’s conventions
of address mistake our monarchs as princes because of the “His Royal Highness”
(or HRH) honorific that precedes their names. In other European countries, such
as the Netherlands, monarchs that have abdicated their thrones are also called
“His Royal Highness.”

As I wrote in a previous article, a British person
unfamiliar with the forms of address in Nigerian English would, for instance,
think the Emir of Kano is a mere prince of Kano if he is addressed as “His
Royal Highness, Muhammadu Sanusi II.”

I don’t know why Nigerians call their monarchs “His Royal
Highness” instead of “His (Royal) Majesty” or some other more befitting
honorific, but given how the British colonial government discouraged monarchs
in their colonies being called “kings” (see my August 3, 2014 article titled “5 Words Native English Speakers Never Ever Use for Themselves”) it is conceivable
that this, too, has roots in colonial politics of racial and cultural
differentiation.

British colonialists compelled traditional rulers in their
colonies to refer to themselves as “chiefs” and not “kings.” Most English
dictionaries define a “chief” as the head of a “tribe” or a “clan.” That’s why
it’s also rendered as “tribal chief.” (Although “tribe” has more than one
meaning, when it is used to refer to an ethnic group, it means primitive,
preliterate people.) Since Europeans—or at least contemporary Europeans—have no
“tribes” (read my articles on the word “tribe”), they have no “chiefs.” Only
nonwhite people do. What Europeans had or have are “kings”—and “queens.”

But a little more context is needed to unpack the
ethnocentrism of the term. I recently read an 1821 British Foreign Office
document titled Correspondence with
Foreign Courts Regarding Execution of Treaties Contracted. On page 110 of
the document, the reader finds that the British colonial government actually
went out of its way to purposively discourage people in their African and Asian
colonies from calling their monarchs “kings.”

“King,” the document says, is reserved only for a British
monarch. Monarchs in the colonies should just be called “chiefs.” If the “chiefs”
enjoy enduring historic prestige among their people, they might be called
“paramount chiefs,” but never “kings.”

Nigerians have internalized this nomenclatural
discrimination and call their monarchs “chiefs.” This is especially true in
northern Nigeria where non-Muslim—or non-Emirate— traditional rulers are called
“chiefs,” and their spheres of traditional influence are called “chiefdoms.”

In southern Nigeria “chief” is chiefly prefixed to the name
of a traditional title holder. (See my June 15, 2014 article titled “A Pragmatic Analysis of ‘Emir,’ ‘Sarki,’ ‘Oba’ and ‘Chief’ in Nigerian English.”)
It is equivalent to a knighthood in Britain, that is, an honor given by a
traditional ruler to a non-royal person for personal merit or, in southern
Nigeria, for being rich and famous. So southern Nigerian “chiefs” are not
royalty.

But “chiefs” in northern Nigeria are royalty, even if
recently invented royalty. Won’t it be nice, in the interest of linguistic
equity, if we prefixed “Chief” to the names of these European monarchs: the
Chief of England, the Chief of Denmark, the Chief of Norway, the Chief of
Spain, the Chief of Sweden, the Chief of the Netherlands, the Chief of Belgium,
etc.?

Why the “the” in the
Gambia?

Many people have asked me to explain the appearance of the
definite article “the” in the name of the Gambia, which just narrowly escaped a
civil war thanks to the intervention of ECOWAS. Well, typically, the names of
countries that derive their names from the names of rivers are often preceded
by the definite article “the.” Gambia takes its name from the 700-mile Gambia River.

Another example of a country that derived its name from a
river and, for that reason, usually has the article “the” in its names is “the
Congo” (named after the Congo River). But there are many countries named after
rivers (such as Zambia, Uruguay, etc.) that don’t officially have the definite article
“the” in their names. It’s a national preference.

Countries whose names are invariably pluralized also usually
have the definite article “the” in their names. Examples are the Netherlands,
the Philippines, the West Indies, the United States, etc.

Question:

I am accustomed to saying "jokes apart" when I
want to get serious after joking, but I was checking my dictionary this morning
and I saw the phrase "joking apart/aside," which means the same thing
with what I know as “jokes apart.” I want to know which one is more correct
than the other.

Answer:

Although it may sound strange to many Nigerians, the correct
idiom is "joking apart" or "joking aside." Sometimes it’s rendered as “all joking
apart/aside.” The phrase "jokes apart," I’ve discovered, is unique to
Nigerian English and Indian English. I am yet to figure out why only Nigerian
and Indians render the phrase as “jokes apart.” Although both varieties of
English are descended from British English, their unique phrasing for the idiom
is certainly not British.

A search for the phrase in the British National
Corpus yielded not a single match. (The British National Corpus is a “100
million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide
range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of current British
English, both spoken and written.”)

Question:

I met an American
girl online some time ago. In the course of our chat, she told me she wasn’t
married, so I said something about her being a “spinster” and she got upset.
What’s wrong with calling an unmarried woman a spinster? What am I missing?

Answer:

You’re missing a lot.
In contemporary English usage, the word spinster is considered pejorative.
Careful speakers and writers avoid it.

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, “In modern
everyday English spinster cannot be used to mean simply 'unmarried woman'; it
is now always a derogatory term, referring or alluding to a stereotype of an
older woman who is unmarried, childless, prissy, and repressed."

So, by the conventions of modern usage, it’s incorrect to
call a young woman in her 20s or 30s—or maybe even early 40s— a “spinster.” The
word is reserved only for women who are still unmarried—and childless— by the
time they reached or are approaching menopause.

American English uses “bachelorette” or “bachelor girl” to
refer to an unmarried young woman. Note, though, that these terms are absent in
British English, although America’s cultural dominance ensures that they are
widely understood. “Single” or “single woman” appears to be the preferred term
across all native English varieties.

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.